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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Healthful food

So Full Bars were on sale at Target recently, so I bought a box. I like the convenience of breakfast/snack bars, but find that many of them don't have enough protein or fiber to fill me up enough to make the calories worth it. I do think that one bar will fill me up for hours, but only because they were so dry, that I had to drink about two glasses of water with it to wash it down. I'm not sure if the food or the water will keep me full until lunch. Not a product I would recommend to others.

I have also been eating more healthful foods at other meals, too. I have rediscovered the rutabaga. I enjoyed them as a kid, but have found that they make a great replacement for potato. It has just a little less fiber & protein than a potato, but about half the calories. That means you can eat twice as much rutabaga as potato and feel fuller without fear of gaining weight.

Last night, I made rutabaga oven fries. With the nutty sweetness that the rutabaga has, they reminded me a bit of sweet potato fries, if they were steak cut. I found a simple recipe online. I tossed them with olive oil before baking and cooked them a bit longer than they suggested. I do think that I will be trying them again in the future.

I don't mean to malign the common potato, but the average American consumes about 129 pounds per year of them. I think it would benefit many of us to replace a few of those pounds with another vegetable that has fewer calories. It would also widen up the flavors experienced during eating, without any negatives.